A second bill restricting independent election monitors and banning absentee voting also passed Thursday, despite being defeated earlier in the week. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change called the restaging of the vote illegal and a breach of parliamentary rules.

Legislators also were to debate legislation prohibiting foreign correspondents from working in Zimbabwe and requiring local journalists to apply for licenses. Violations would carry a two-year prison sentence.

The emergency measures are part of a campaign by embattled President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union party to clamp down on the opposition in the run-up to March presidential elections.

The increasingly unpopular Mugabe, 77, faces an uphill battle to stay in power after 21 years in office.

A former school teacher and avowed Marxist, Mugabe led the nation to independence from British colonial rule in 1980 after a bitter bush war that left more than 50,000 mostly black fighters dead.

But the opposition has been gaining on him. Mugabe's party narrowly won parliamentary elections last June, and now controls 93 of the 150 seats in Parliament.

He faces the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, who was a civilian labor activist before Zimbabwe won independence. Mugabe calls Tsvangirai a traitor backed by Britain and wealthy white Zimbabweans.

The opposition has criticized an often-violent government program to seize thousands of white-owned farms and return them to blacks, calling it a ploy to bolster Mugabe's waning support.

Tsvangirai's opposition also has called for Western-style economic reforms to revitalize the crumbling economy through investment, foreign aid and loans that have mostly dried up since ruling party militants began occupying white-owned land in March 2000.

Zimbabwe has come under mounting international pressure for tacitly sanctioning lawlessness and the deaths of opposition activists.

Mugabe has ignored appeals from the European Union and others to restore the rule of law, prompting the EU to cut annual development aid for Zimbabwe. Aid for the next five years may also be at stake unless the situation changes, EU officials said.

A Zimbabwean delegation is to meet with European Union officials Friday in Belgium to discuss the African nation's human rights situation.

Britain's International Development Secretary Clare Short said Thursday that the international community could press for change in Zimbabwe, but there was "no magic" to stop a government from ruling a country.

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"Zimbabwe is a tragedy of enormous proportions," Short told BBC radio from Sudan, where she is attending a regional conference. She said the nation once had enormous potential but it has seen its chances for economic growth wrecked by "brutalism in its politics."